"Oh, you can't help that. My sweet mistress, you are not the first that has had to choose between two worthy men. For, in sooth, I have nothing to say against my rival neither. I know him better than I did: he is a very worthy gentleman though he is damnably in my way."
"And you are a very noble one to say so."
"And you are one of those that make a man noble: I feel that petty arts are not the way to win you, and I scorn them. Sweet Mistress Kate, I adore you. You are the best and noblest, as well as the loveliest of women."
"Oh, hush! Mr. Neville, I am a creature of clay; and you are another; and both of us coming home from a funeral. Do think of that."
Here they were interrupted by Mr. Peyton asking Kate to lend him a shilling for the groom. Kate replied aloud that she had left her purse at home, then whispered in his ear that she had not a shilling in the world: and this was strictly true; for her little all was Tom Leicester's now. With this they reached the Hall, and the coy Kate gave both Neville and Gaunt the slip, and got amongst her mates. There her tongue went as fast as her neighbors', though she had just come back from a funeral.
But soon the ladies and gentlemen were all invited to the reading of the Will.
And now chance, which had hitherto befriended Neville by throwing him into one carriage with Kate, gave Gaunt a turn. He found her a moment alone and near the embrasure of a window. He seized the opportunity and asked her might he say a word in her ear. "What a question!" said she, gaily; and the next moment they had the embrasure to themselves.
"Kate," said he, hurriedly, "in a few minutes, I suppose, I shall be master of this place. Now you told me once you would rather be an abbess or a nun than marry me."
"Did I?" said Kate. "What a sensible speech! But the worst of it is I'm never in the same mind long."
"Well," replied Griffith, "I think of all that falls from your lips; and your will is mine; only for pity's sake do not wed any man but me. You have known me so long; why, you know the worst of me by this time: and you have only seen the outside of him."